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Badger Trust loses High Court challenge

The Badger Trust has lost its High Court bid to block a cull of thousands of badgers to tackle tuberculosis in cattle.

The Trust argued Government proposals for two pilot culls in Gloucestershire and Somerset were "very, very controversial" at both animal welfare and scientific levels and should be stopped.

But today Mr Justice Ouseley, sitting in London, ruled the legal challenge had failed on all grounds and refused to quash a Government decision last December to allow the culls by farmers and landowners to go ahead.

At a hearing last month, the Trust accused the livestock industry of using badgers as a scapegoat and underestimating the risk of cattle-to-cattle transmission of bovine tuberculosis (bTB).